Democratic sentiment within the Muslim community is growing, insisted Boston College professor Qamar-ul Huda at the April 30 Center seminar "Searching for Islamic Democracy: Developing Progressive Voices is Islam." But while Muslim proponents of democracy "are linked by their new and dynamic ways of thinking about religion" and its relation to government, Huda said, they emphasize different issues. He identified and discussed two major groups—"progressive" Muslims and "liberal" Muslims—who represent two distinct approaches to Islamic democracy.

Progressive Muslims became an intellectual force in the 1980s and "are clearly on the political left." They advocate institutional change and political reform in both the United States and the Islamic world, but hold that their belief in the separation of religion and the state would not—and should not—preclude "a prominent place for religion" in any Islamic democracy. Muslim clerics would eschew politics but serve as "an ethical branch within society." Liberal Muslims see "eye to eye" with progressives about not marginalizing Islam, Huda said, but their movement is more centrist and more recent. In response to the attacks of September 11, liberals sought to distance the American Muslim community from Wahhabism and terrorism. Claiming that Islam is not stagnant or inherently hostile to democratic values and individual rights, they are now eagerly asserting their presence in American society and working to foster more open societies in the Muslim world.

Center president Hillel Fradkin moderated the wide-ranging discussion that followed. Participants included David Abramson of the U.S. Department of State, Brian Cathcart of Initiatives of Change, Steve Lenzner of the New Citizenship Project, Eliseo Mercado of Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Steve Rempe of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and Sarah Wolfowitz of the InterNews Network.